


Setting Mythology

by chaemera



Series: Spacejammer [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 07:02:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18256187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaemera/pseuds/chaemera
Summary: A bit of mythology from within the setting.





	1. The Black Butterfly

It could be just a story, one of those tales thought up by bored spacers to get a rise out of their crewmates or random drinking buddies at the bar in port. It might be just that, and nothing more. It's always a story heard from a friend, who got it from a cousin, who...

It always starts with a ship discovered adrift in space, dead at helm but otherwise apparently fine. Hails are met with silence, unanswered, and there is no response when grapples are engaged or a boarding party sent in. Internal atmosphere, lights, heating, gravity, all are normal. The cargo's still in the hold, there's plenty of fuel in the tanks. But there are no people. The entire ship, from stem to stern, is utterly empty of its crew. Food lies half-eaten on tables, a book sits open on a desk, all the computers are on in the bridge... but there are no people. And when the boarders finally reach the bridge, they see a single, black butterfly perched on a console, wings fanning lazily as though it were perfectly reasonable for it to be there. Any attempt to catch the butterfly, or even to get near it, result it in flitting away and apparently vanishing into the ventilation system.

Checking the computers shows the ship entered a routine jump far, far outside expected range for something to be in this sector.


	2. The Song of the Deep

The ship now known as the _Song of the Deeps_  was originally registered as _Kelsan's Promise_ , a courier ship out of Pegasus Reach. She was known for running low- or no-mass cargos with incredible speed, her mage-at-helm possessing a remarkable range, easily within the 98th percentile for the ship's displacement group. Until one day, the _Promise_ failed to make a delivery. Everything seemed routine as the ship entered her Gate Corridor on schedule, but she never arrived at her destination. No distress signals were received, and absolutely nothing came out of the destination Gate at all, not even a flicker touching the structure until the next scheduled transit, which manifested calm as you please.

Three years later, an exploration vessel reported finding the _Promise_ by long-range communications, relaying visuals that certainly matched the missing vessel. It seemed to be a drifting derelict, undamaged but without power or crew as far as external observation could tell. And then it vanished, without even the usual signs of a short-jump.

Ever since, there have been fleeting sightings, but the tales that give life to the ship's legend (and which brought the change of name) are the ones that speak of sounds coming through the comm when you're flying realspace, out at the edges of the Deep Black. Whispers and notes like some great beast singing to itself far beneath the ocean, on every channel, quiet and soft... And if you could hear the song, the ship would never be far away, drifting as though abandoned. Until it vanishes back into the void once more.


	3. The Mage War

As is to be expected, magic has been employed during wartimes, both for good and ill. It has shielded cities, sometimes entire planets, from bombardment. It has healed the wounded. It has blocked the life-giving light and heat of a star from its world. It has unleashed catastrophic storms. But for all magic is powerful, for these larger effects to even occur takes time, effort, and no little amount of risk. Logistically, sometimes it's just simpler to use a gun. And while any given mage may be powerful and near omniscient, he is still simply one man.

The few times mages have been employed as soldiers instead of individuals, the destruction was unprecedented. Entire solar systems destroyed, not simply laid barren but shattered, stars burnt out and the charred corpses of their planets hurtling away like so much debris. Entire biospheres twisted into not simply soldiers but weapons. And the counterstrikes proved just as horrific. The First Mage War was ended by employing a kinetic strike of one planet against another: literally crashing an entire world into the stronghold of the Wizard Empire of Edrenas. The communications and trade infrastructure of Human Space suffered horribly, both during the war and after. Piracy ran rampant until the Core Worlds were able to band together and form a new alliance of sufficient strength to bring Law back to the outlying systems.

Since that first Great War, there have been smaller conflicts which employed magic in a primary role, but the majority of systems remembered the horrors that occurred previously, and thus such things were quickly put down by largely everyone that could raise a hand. Treaties were signed against the use of certain war magics.

And then there was the time when an attempt went wrong.

Nobody is entirely sure what happened, but records from the time help piece together a bit of the setting, at least. A militaristic world (some would say fascist) had taken to conscripting mages under the premise of keeping them under government control for the safety of the citizenry. From there, details are hazy at best, but most scholars agree that there was probably an attempt at some sort of Great Working that went wrong. Scholars disagree on what kind of working it may have been, but the eventual results are plain to see, even to this day.

The planet is now a predator. It doesn't move very fast, in the great scale of things, but its prey isn't the most maneuverable thing in space, either. There hasn't been a sighting of the Beast Planet in years, but everyone's sure it's still out there. And it serves as a warning to those that consider starting another Mage War.


End file.
